The Vaccines Are Allowing Us to Dream of Spring Again

This photo is the last photo I have in my phone taken before March 11, 2020, the day widely considered the unofficial beginning of the pandemic here in the United States, the day before Utah Jazz basketball player Rudy Gobert tested positive and shut down the NBA, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson revealed they had the virus, and President Trump sniffled his way through an error-riddled, deeply concerning Oval Office “speech.” Every aspect of that picture, taken during my family’s annual trip to St. Louis Cardinals spring training in Jupiter, Fla., screams Before Time. We’re at a stadium with thousands of fans in it. Everyone is crammed in next to one another. My children are smiling. This photo was taken a little more than eight months ago. But today it feels beamed in from another dimension.

Covid-19 has so upended every aspect of life on this planet, and we’ve been so spinning our collective wheels trying to get it under control (until recently, when America apparently decided to take the key out of the ignition and dive face first into the ditch), that it is easy to forget that someday this will all be over. Really, it will. And, considering the news that there are now two vaccines of 90 percent-plus effectiveness, that day may be closer than any of us had imagined. It could be here soon.